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Clive James RIP

Anyone catch the idiotic news caster on Sky news when the news broke who said she remembered his famous chat show where the Bee Gees walked off...
I kid you not!
 
Oh man, that’s sad. Just like my hero S.J. Perelman, his writing could make you cry with laughter one minute and feel like a total illiterate the next.
foxwelljsly said:
Quite, Unreliable Memoirs is one of the great works of Autobiography. RIP
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On the dunny man’s collision with his bicycle:
‘Needless to say, the contents of the pan had been fully divulged. All the stuff had come out. But what was really remarkable was the way that none of it had missed him.’
 
I enjoyed his writing immensely. Unreliable Memoirs is terribly funny but beautifully observed and evocative of growing up. Cultural Amnesia is wonderful, such a spread of knowledge.

We don't have the BBC Sounds app outside the uk yet, we're still on iplayer, where you can access 60 of his "point of view" podcasts, they've had me laughing out loud while walking the dogs.

Thanks for so much, Clive.
 
foxwelljsly said:
Quite, Unreliable Memoirs is one of the great works of Autobiography. RIP
Click to expand...

Truly a fabulous writer and raconteur. As has been said crying with laughter one minute and bringing you down to ground zero the next. RIP Clive

If castaway on a desert island Unreliable Memoirs would be my book of choice. I'd never tire of reading it again and again,
 
Ptah said:
The early volumes of memoirs were very good & funny. Of course in the mid-70s you went straight to the back page of the Observer where Clive's TV reviews were the best thing in the paper and difficult to read without laughing out loud. I never thought the TV TV progs were really as good. Some of the best things he did, for me, were the lyrics to the Pete Atkin songs in the early 70s which are absolutely superb. The LPs still sound great on vinyl btw. The worst things were the 'literary satires' of the same era which rightly earned him a reputation as a bit of a pseud with Private Eye.
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His TV reviews were very funny. I was reminded this evening that he once pointed out that Poldark was an anagram of old krap.
 
He was a fixture of the 1980s New Years eve celebrations, that is when ppl still celebrated it. Nowadays it feels like New Year’s Eve is spent licking wounds & counting how much ammunition is left.
 
Clive James on Television was great.

One of those programmes actually worth watching on the TV.

Miss those days.

Sad Loss.
 
Just watched a rerun of him being interviewed by Mary Beard on BBC2 . Amusing and moving in equal parts. Left a huge lump in my throat.What a keen observer of the human condition he was.

I have to say that for me, the death of the likes of Clive James and Jonathan Millar marks the passing of an era in which I grew up, and is a stark reminder of my own mortality - Pseuds Corner here I come - so now I'm off for a small drink.
 
I used to love his writing in the Observer and read him has a kid. I still remember him describing Sydney Opera House as a typewriter stuffed with clams.

RIP he was a legend.
 
Sad day, but remarkable in its own way that he lasted so long after his Leukaemia diagnosis.

A polymath and a great writer who understood the power of humour and deployed it extremely effectively. The world feels a little bit diminished for his passing. Thanks for everything, Clive.
 
Enjoyed Clive James' Observer reviews, some of the books I read and many of the television programmes.

Richard Williams has written a remembrance of Clive at thebluemoment.com. He got to know him in the early Seventies. There is a link to the poem Japanese Maple, which Clive wrote after his daughter bought him one.

Japanese Maple
Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that.That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

© Clive James, 2014
 
Very sad day, his last years were difficult. I always loved the way he carried his great intellect lightly, presented but never forced upon you.
 
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